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Friday, January 22, 2016

Early bloomers

I guess it's spring. The evergreen viburnum is flowering.

Viburnum buds and early flowers. January 13th.

All the websites I've looked at say it blooms from April to maybe July, except for one study that found an outlier blooming in January, on the east coast, 'way back in 1932. (The study was done in 1980.)

It's warmer here on Vancouver Island, and this may become the hottest year recorded so far. (2015 beat all previous records, and 2014 was the warmest previous year; I see a possible trend here.) But given our unpredictable weather pattern, these flowers may be jumping the gun. It could freeze hard any day, without warning.

It has rained every day since I took this photo, and they're promising us mostly warm rain for the next two weeks. But that's normal spring weather, too.

Postscript: I realize most of the continent is far from enjoying spring weather this week, what with blizzards and freezing rain, thunderstorms and floods, and I'm sorry. I hope it's over soon, without loss of life or too much damage. And I'll stop grumbling about a bit of rain now.